do not go gentle into that good night
by Flora Obsidian
Summary: There is no power, Light or Dark, that is capable of stopping her from returning to her family. It's only a matter of time. (Sequel to 'lights will guide you home' feat. Mara Jade)
1. Chapter 1

She is a force of nature, something not to be trifled with- she is a hurricane, a whirlwind, a twister, a sandstorm raging across the desert, a lava flow inexorably surging forward, a wildfire of gold and red and orange and heat tearing across an open plain, heedless of anything which she comes across, anything that dares step between her and her goal. She burns, and she burns _bright_ , enveloping a select few in her warmth and engulfing the rest of the worlds in a blaze. Such fires cannot be controlled, cannot be contained- perhaps, just for a short time, there is the illusion of submission, something to trick whomever is foolish enough to set foot in her path, but then it is only a matter of who blinks first, of who lasts longer, and such fires never burn out.

And the Force is a part of that strength, yes- eternal, all that has passed and all that can ever come to pass, but the fire is integral to her character, her being, her essence- she _is_ the fire, and the Force flows through her. Even cut off from it for fifteen long, long years, she has not faded. Diminished to embers, yes, but she is not broken. All an ember needs is a gust of wind at the right time, a splash of fuel-

The Troopers who guard her cell, a tiny room five paces wide and five paces long and a low ceiling she can jump up and touch if she is so inclined, located at the end of a dim hallway on a base orbiting an uninhabitable planet somewhere far away, where no one thinks to look- they whisper of treason. She takes interests in their words without moving. She rarely moves, has not moved in quite some time- why _he_ even bothers keeping her alive, she does not know, but she is alive, and there has to be a reason for that. Still, she gives them nothing. She has never given anything, and she does not move, and her guards, in turn, become complacent. There was a time when none of them would dare speak where she could hear them, a time when she was guarded because they were _afraid_ of her.

Then she was guarded because she was important, possible leverage against her captors' enemies, against her _family-_ \- and now she is guarded because no one has told them to stop.

They whisper of treason, of a _rebel_ Trooper, a traitor. She listens to the whispers and holds them close to her, tucks them around the dim embers they have never been able to stamp out and feeds the flame. A Trooper defecting means that something is happening, or something has already happened. Troopers never defect. Troopers aren't programmed to defect.

Something is happening.

The whispers grow into murmurs, and murmurs into low conversation, and conversation into horrified oaths. Starkiller has been destroyed, whatever that means- though the name sounds ominous, and her mind flashes back to thirty years ago, standing at the Emperor's side-

Millions dead, the Troopers say. Millions of Troopers, just like them. It's easier to think of the Troopers as mindless, trained from birth to follow orders and nothing else, but a Trooper has defected.

Millions of _lives_.

And one Trooper, a new one, who pushes a tray with a bowl of brownish water and an S-Ration into her cell- the Trooper's hands are shaking. Something drops into the bowl, and they don't notice, and they leave, and the door locks itself behind them as it always does. She dips her fingers into the murk and pulls out a keycard, and her eyes go wide, and-

-she gives them nothing. She slides the keycard under the single pillow she has, now flat and lumpy from more than a decade of use, and obediently eats what has been presented to her, because that is what she is expected to do.

A different guard brings her food the next day. She can hear them talking to another outside her cell, not even trying to keep quiet anymore- _TN-5987 shot herself, lost the keys to the kriffing door and didn't want to face decommission-_

Maybe she regrets it. Another life lost before it could be saved. But maybe she doesn't.

She doesn't think about it.

She eats her ration. She sleeps. She eats her ration. She sleeps. She waits until the single guard who works the twilight shift brings her dinner (brownish water and another S-Ration), and she kicks their legs out from under them and grabs them and hits their head against the chair bolted to the floor above the hole for the 'fresher until they stop moving.

She eats her ration and drinks her water and takes up the keycard and walks away.

Guarded because no one has ever told them to stop guarding her. It's easy to walk out, disturbingly easy- she thinks maybe they're _letting_ her, that this is a test or a trap, but the Troopers still march patrols and she keeps moving and nothing happens.

Then again, three men and a pair of droids and a Wookie once sneaked on board an Imperial Star Destroyer to rescue a Princess, and they made it out all right.

Her plan- what little of it there is, though she spent most of the night thinking about it, ever since she got the keycard- is to steal the closest fighter and speed away. It's almost what she does, until she sees a familiar ship docked in between some TIE fighters and a Lambda-class shuttle, stripped of its old paint and marked with an insignia belonging to her former captors- _her ship_.

Her ship. It's a custom design; she can pick it out of a million others with ease. She knows her ship better than she knows herself, and there are no tracking devices hidden away- no large ones, nothing immediately obvious, at any rate. Small trackers have a correspondingly small range, so if she can get away, she'll have time to do a more thorough search.

Alarms sound out behind her as she flies into open space. Alarms disappear as the stars blur and twist in the viewscreen and she leaves the small base and its uninhabited system light years behind her.

It's too easy, it's _too easy_ , and she _knows_ that it's too easy- she doesn't get by on flukes, on luck, on chance, and the Force gives and takes away in equal measure. She can't make herself believe that it was an accident that the Trooper dropped the keycard into her water and didn't notice. She can't believe she sneaked out of a base while attracting as little attention as she just did.

But the past fifteen years have been anything but easy. Fifteen years cut off from the Force. Fifteen years since she has seen her family. Fifteen years since her nephew fell to the Dark, since she nearly died in confronting him. Fifteen years since she has held her daughter. Fifteen years in captivity.

Mara Jade Skywalker stands from the pilot's seat and double checks the nav to make sure the course she's plotted will successfully throw off any tail she may have, or at least give them a bit of trouble finding her. Then she turns and walks back through the hallways of the _Jade Sabre_ , running her fingers along the familiar walls and walking familiar paths back and forth. She can almost hear her daughters laughter echoing back to her ears.

"But I deserve easy," she says to the empty air. "Just this _once_."

* * *

The problem is actually _finding_ her husband and her daughter again. Wherever this generation's Rebellion is hiding won't be common knowledge, not with the First Order having risen from the ashes of the Empire and the Knights filling the power void the Emperor and his Hands had left behind. Still, it's the Rebellion she needs to find if she wants to find Luke. Her husband is bright in the Force, but his presence is quiet, much like he himself is, and he'll be careful to hide himself with a new Sith Order on the rise- or already risen, she doesn't know, she's been away so _long_.

And she has a kriffing inhibitor collared around her neck. It wouldn't matter if he was projecting so loudly that even beings who _aren't_ Force-sensitive could hear him. She has no way of telling.

So her first mission is to get this blasted thing _off_ of her and see if she can melt it down. She'll use it to make new parts for a blaster that she stole and smile as she shoots whomever corrupted her nephew in the head.

(she knows, rationally, that something will need to be done about Kylo Ren, the man who almost killed her, but that's a topic she has dwelt on for fifteen long years, and she wants something else to think about; Ren's actions are not excused, but he was just a child before the Sith found him)

Her second mission is to find the Rebellion's base, or one of their bases if they've organized themselves enough to _have_ more than one, though she doubts it. It's clear enough, as she flips through propaganda piece after propaganda piece on the holochannels, that the First Order and the Sith have taken over completely. She can't imagine that the Organas will be anywhere _but_ in the heart of the fight against it, and Luke is never far from his sister.

Rey is going to be twenty soon, if the ship's chronometer is accurate. Her little girl is going to be twenty.

The _Jade Sabre_ has been stripped of almost everything useful. Though the ship has been painted in First Order colors and given what she assumes must be their insignia, Mara has the suspicion they were going to refurbish the ship into something for themselves but never got around to finishing the job. It doesn't look like it's been piloted in quite some time.

Her holos are all gone. The drawings Rey and Ben had made for her are gone.

Organa - Luke's sister, Organa, not her husband - was the only one of their rather odd family to have had a normal childhood, though even hers was somewhat skewed by her early entry to politics and her high status and the shadow of the Empire. Luke grew up knowing nothing but hard work under Tatooine's twin suns and the daily ramifications of being the free-born son of a slave; Organa (the husband, this time) was a street urchin from the slums of Corellia; Mara herself was trained by the Emperor for as long as she can remember, which is about as far from a normal childhood as anyone can get. She remembers how much Rey loved visiting her aunt and uncle, because her uncle would let her "help" make repairs to the _Falcon_ and her cousin was, according to Rey, the most wonderful person ever to grace the galaxy- and her aunt would take her places, to parks or carnivals or holofilms, and her aunt would sit down with her and Ben and color with them. Rey always came back from her visits with drawings for Luke to hang in the classrooms or for Mara to put in her ship.

She looks down at her stolen blaster and decides she's going to need something bigger. This one won't be enough to shoot all the people she's intending to shoot.

 _Revenge is not the way of the Jedi_ , she can almost hear Luke saying- revenge, no, but _justice_ , on the other hand...

There's a benefit to not fitting any definition of "normal," however- she's a smuggler, and a Jedi, and a former Imperial, and she knows a lot of people who will do almost anything on the down-low for the right amount of credits.

Like removing a Force inhibitor. Or finding the location of a secret base.

* * *

She stops by the Hosnian system first, to see if the First Order has taken the base of the Second Galactic Republic like the Empire took over Coruscant, and the _Jade Sabre_ leaves hyperspace and finds a massive field of rubble slowly orbiting around the system's star.

Mara doesn't throw up, or cry, or swear. She stares, for a very long time, and bows her head.

She's grateful for the inhibitor collared to her neck- the Force echoes of billions upon billions of lives snuffed out are all around her, and she can't hear a single one of them.

 _Starkiller_ , she remembers hearing the Troopers say.

 _Death Star_ , she remembers hearing the Emperor say.

* * *

Fifteen years ago, she couldn't find her daughter or her husband. All around her, the lives of the Jedi trainees were being snuffed out one by one by one, and her nephew burned of pain and anger and Dark in the Force.

She reached out long enough to confirm that Luke and Rey were near each other, only to find that they _weren't_ \- that Rey was on the opposite side of the Temple from him, and that Ben- that _Kylo Ren_ was near her, and that Rey was terrified.

And she ran.

She found Ren in one of the training rooms, alone, and Rey's presence in the Force growing more distant the further away she ran. He stood with his arms loosely at his sides, hood pulled up to hide his face in shadow. He turned to look at her.

"I wish you hadn't found me," he said, and he sounded almost regretful.

"Did you hurt my daughter?" she asked him, blue saber flaring into existence in her hand. The light was enough to glint off his eyes, black and empty, though they filled with something like greed at the sight of the weapon in her hand, that which was once Anakin Skywalker's. That which was once Darth Vader's.

"No," he said.

"Then I'll kill you quickly."

She wouldn't, though, because she knew what it was like to be Dark and come back, and Luke had seen the change happen in his own father, and Leia would never forgive them if they killed her son. She would understand why it was necessary, perhaps, but she would never forgive them.

And the saber had swung toward her, and she hadn't blocked fast enough, and the last thing she heard was Luke's agonized cry before the world fell into flames.

Fifteen years ago, she had woken up with an inhibitor around her neck and a scar across her side that made every breath feel like smoke and fire, and she had known nothing else.

* * *

Having the inhibitor gone is... indescribable. She doesn't have the words to explain what it's like to lose the Force for so long and then have it back again. She nearly passes out from the feeling, and she maybe almost cries, and she comes close to throwing up. It's kind of like the cliche of losing a part of herself and finding it again, but even that doesn't quite do it justice.

Mara leaves the backwater planet behind her, her pockets rattling pleasingly with credit chips, the _Jade Sabre_ sloppily painted over to hide its First Order markings. The procedure to remove the inhibitor had been far too expensive to take place in a building that looked like the inside of a Hutt's 'fresher, but she's always been good at sabaac, and she has plenty of credits left over even after paying.

The inhibitor, warped metal and bloody where it had dug into her skin, sits in the copilot's chair, next to a new blaster. She'll be making new parts as soon as she gets the chance.

* * *

Mara finds Maz Kanata about a dozen systems from where the elderly alien is supposed to be, grumbling as she goes about restarting her old watering hole. Mara found _that_ mostly demolished, the great stone ruins collapsed in on themselves, signs of a battle having taken place not long ago. A few standard months, give or take.

"Don't give me any of that bantha fodder about seeing the same eyes in different people, Maz," is the first thing she says.

Maz's face shifts from wary confusion to shock to grateful relief, and she hobbles up onto a table so give Mara a hug. She waits it out- she's never been fully comfortable with people touching her, generally only people she knows _well_ , and fifteen years of next to no contact-

"It's good to see you, child," Maz says, still hugging her. "Were those First Order bastards hiding you from us all?"

"Who else?"

"Luke was certain that Ren had murdered you..." Maz steps back, finally, and Mara draws the Force around her like a protective shield, taking comfort in its presence after it being missing for so long. "Is Luke who you're looking for?"

Maz's new place isn't even finished being renovated, and the construction droids have departed for the night so Maz can get some sleep without their noise in the background. She likes to supervise things, Mara knows. It's just the two of them right now, standing in a room half open to the sky above, no form of sentient life for miles. Still, Mara hesitates before speaking.

"I'm looking for the Rebellion base. Organa will be in the thick of things, I know that much, and you know Han, and Luke is never far from his sister. I can find one of them, I can find Luke."

Maz nods, seeing her logic, and then stops abruptly- frowns, and looks at Mara, and Mara definitely does _not_ like the pity in her eyes. That pity does not bode well for whatever is going to come next.

"How much do you know of what's happened, Mara?"

Mara does not like the pity she sees.

"The Hosnian system is gone. The First Order is being run by a group of Sith. There _is_ a Rebellion, I've heard the rumors about it, but the First Order is everywhere." For the first moment since her escape, she allows just a moment of panic, concern, worry- has someone died? Either of the Organas, or- or _Luke_ \- or if something happened to _Rey_ \- "Tell me what I'm missing, Maz, and then point me in the direction of the Rebellion."

Maz pats her shoulder and sits down on top of the table, gesturing for Mara to take a chair. "They're going by the Resistance now, but the idea is the same. Han and Leia split some time after the massacre at the Temple, I talked him into going back, but Force only knows if he's stayed. Luke... left, Mara. He stopped by here with Rey, fifteen years ago, and gave me his father's old lightsaber- your saber- and said he was leaving for a planet on the Outer Rim where Rey would be safe."

So- not _good_ , but her daughter is alive, and her husband is alive, even if they aren't as close to the Rebellion- _Resistance-_ \- as she initially thought they would be-

Maz can't contact the base directly. She explains what had happened on Takodana, and how the First Order has been shooting anyone and everyone with even the vaguest of connections to the Resistance. Maz has ducked out from their line of fire for now, but communication with the base, even on an encrypted channel, is far too risky. She explains that Luke left a map, should anyone ever need him, but there was always a key piece to it that was missing -– Mara has to scoff and roll her eyes at that; her husband has always had a flair for the dramatic and obscure, and it's enough to make her want to slap him sometimes. She also loves him for it.

She mentions how Han came to her one day with a runaway and a girl with the Force and part of the map to Luke -– a girl with the Force named _Rey_ , brown hair and her mother's eyes, _Mara's eyes_ , a girl who knew nothing of her family or her past- and that is what the pity is for, Mara knows. Maz doesn't know for sure if that Rey is their Rey, but she can't be anybody _else_. And Mara can't think of a situation that would separate Luke from their daughter like that, not one that makes sense with the rest of the scraps of information she has, with the rest of the story Maz is telling.

But there has to be an answer, and now she has all the more reason to find home again -– as if she didn't have enough before.

Maz tells Mara the coordinates, given to her by a pilot stopping through in case she ever needs a place to run to. Mara thanks her and stands to leave.

"Mara Jade." Maz is looking at her with those ancient brown eyes. "Mara Jade Skywalker. Tread carefully, child."

That's all she has to say, apparently, and the whole conversation leaves Mara unsettled. But she has not gotten this far by being reckless, and she will -– _carefully_ , yes, if she must -– find her way back to her family again. She spent a long time being alone, and a long time learning how not to be. She's not giving them up. She's not giving up on them.

* * *

 **Do you ever just... forget how much you love a character until you start writing them again? I love Mara. I forgot how much I love Mara.**

 **As is obvious, I'm borrowing a bit from the EU just by using her character. The _Jade Sabre_ was the second ship she owned - a wedding present designed and built for her by Luke. Interactions between Mara and Luke from the EU (in this 'verse) occurred pre-TFA, which offers an explanation for how Luke's first saber showed up again with Maz despite being lost at Cloud City and how she and Luke met.**

 **As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed. Next chapter should be up tomorrow.**


	2. Chapter 2

Rey is sitting cross-legged on a rooftop, looking down on the rest of the Resistance base beneath her and relishing in the quiet. The chaos is nice, up to a point, but it gets overwhelming for someone who grew up entirely alone. She leans back against a spire and feels the sun and the breeze on her skin and takes no notice of the ship sinking closer to the shipyards until she catches a glimpse of it out of the corner of her eye- her mind hones in, brushing over the metal structure and finding no crew, just a pilot, one pilot burning bright in the Force, but- another Jedi? But there _are_ no other Jedi, none so well-trained. Her father is meeting somewhere with Leia and the Resistance generals and higher-ups, so it can't be him. Besides, his presence is distinctive.

The pilot isn't a Sith, though, and the ship hasn't been shot down. On the contrary, people seem to be flocking out towards the shipyards as it comes in to land- something important, then, some _one_ important, though she can't think who. But the pilot isn't Dark- or Grey, a concept which her father had explained once to her during a reasonably civil conversation in the mess hall. They're getting better at that kind of thing, though it still gets... awkward, at times. Neither of them are good with words.

Rey, ever-curious, hops nimbly from the rooftop to the ground, some hundred feet below her, the Force cushioning her fall, and starts off.

The crowd have gotten larger by the time she reaches the shipyards- she can feel her father somewhere nearby, and the waves of emotion pouring off of him, and then Leia, much the same. She picks out Poe and Finn from the chaos and works her way over to them, gently nudging minds with the Force so people don't mind so much when she bumps into them in her haste.

"What's going on?" she asks when she gets there, and Poe stares at her, eyes wide. Finn, at least, seems to be just as confused as she is. "Who's here? Is it someone important?"

"Rey-" Poe starts, then stops, then tries to start, stops- tries to start again, with more success than before. "That's the _Jade Sabre._ "

The stranger's presence in the Force remains as unfamiliar as it was when she first noticed it, but she knows the name.

Two hands, fingers long and thin and slender and edged with rough callouses, wrapped gently around her own, and her feet on top of someone else's- _look at that, my little Rey of sunshine, you're walking!_ \- and sitting on a woman's lap, those same fingers tying her hair up until three little buns- and watching with glee as Mama sewed a tiny pilot's uniform to put on Mr. Dollie, her hair in the sunlight of Yavin IV matching the color of the orange fabric-

"That's not possible," she says, and she realizes she's trembling.

Poe just looks at her, a bit lost and a bit pale. "I was in the meeting with Skywalker and the General, we were coordinating our next raid on First Order forces. The call was patched through. She came from Maz. He recognized her voice."

She turns her gaze toward where the crowd is thicker, people pushing forward to see the woman of legend.

 _Rey!_

Her father's shout ripples out in the Force, centering in on her in a state of almost-confusion underneath the chaos of his emotions, not expecting her to be so close by- _love-hope-awe_ and _alive-love-_ _ **alive**_ -

 _Rey..._

She forgoes the gentle Force nudges this time as she pushes through the throng crowding around the men and women of legend. Her quarterstaff smacks a few people in the face- she probably elbows some others- she _knows_ she steps on a few toes. Mara Jade Skywalker is standing next to Luke, their foreheads pressed together, and Rey flounders for a moment in the face of such emotion- her father is crying, actually crying, and Leia and Han stand at a respectful distance, and- who _are_ all these people, anyway, thinking they have the right to intrude on their reunion?

And again there is the disconnect from herself and those people of legend- _Mama_ is an entirely different set of memories and emotions than the tales spun of Mara Jade Skywalker, the Imperial, the smuggler, the Jedi- just like _Papa_ is not her father, not anymore. So even when she is in sight she does not step forward, not yet- she sees, and she does not move. The woman is tall, a couple inches taller than her father, and her hair is a flaming red streaked through with silvery gray. Her skin is freckled, unhealthily pale. She has a build and angle to her posture that reminds Rey of herself, of the other scavengers on Jakku- strong out of necessity and sandblasted into something hard and unyielding, burning with a quiet inner strength to keep them warm on the frigid desert nights. There is a scar across her face, probably more that Rey cannot see. Her clothes are stolen, too large for her, draping over a body that seems too thin.

"Can't get rid of me that easy, Skywalker," the woman says, voice thick with emotion. Rey's father makes a choked noise that might be a laugh. "You're stuck with me."

"Good," he manages to say.

Chewie loses patience and surges forward to sweep the two of them up in a massive hug, and the woman's feet dangle off the ground. She's laughing. Someone else has finally realized that maybe the middle of the shipyards isn't a private place, particularly not with a crowd, and has started herding people away, and Rey- Rey stands, and watches.

 _Go on, kid,_ Grandpa's voice whispers, gentle and warm. She looks around, but he isn't here- looks back, and Leia has joined the group hug, and Han, Han is looking back at Rey. Han understands. Han didn't have a family for a long time, either.

It's a strange feeling to get used to.

She makes her left foot move first, and then her right, and then her left again, and the slight momentum and the mantra of _don't-think-just-act_ keep her walking forward until Chewie looks down at her, huffs something, and pulls her into the pile.

Her mother looks at her with so much love and adoration she nearly has to back away. With Grandpa it's different, Grandpa raised her, _knows_ her, but to have virtual strangers who care _so much-_ \- about _her_? Even Poe and Finn had something in common with her, to make them care. "You're all grown up," she whispers, and puts her hand on Rey's cheek. "I missed so much."

Missed the sandstorms and the loneliness and the time she nearly bled out in the sand dunes because another scavenger found the partial hyperdrive she had ripped out from an X-Wing and tried to take it from her (they hadn't succeeded)- missed the nighttime stories, the rare moments of joy and laughter-

"We need to check your ship for homing beacons," Leia says, sounding reluctant. Rey realizes that they're all wet-eyed, now. "I imagine you already did, but-"

"Protocol," her mother says dryly, not taking her eyes off Rey's face. They're a hazel-colored type of green, flecked with gold- her heart wrenches. She has her mother's eyes. Grandpa never said. "Nice to see some things haven't changed. Suppose there's a meeting, too?"

"Unfortunately."

So they leave the shipyards, and they meet, and Rey sits in on the meeting, tuning out the words entirely and staring at her mother's hair and trying to recall if the laughter in her memories belongs to her or Grandma- it doesn't last long, and once the various higher-ups conclude for themselves that Mara Jade Skywalker did, in fact, escape by herself and was not brainwashed or something similar (Luke and Leia push the point, citing the Force and _yes, sir, we can tell these things_ and _are you implying I cannot do my duty as General_ \- and they aren't _lying_ , because Rey can tell these things, too, and she has no reason to defend a stranger) they can all leave. Leia offers her private quarters as a place for them to talk and hugs Mara- so does Han, and so does Chewie, though Chewie really hugs everybody at once and Rey hears something crack- and then it's just the three.

"Where did you go, after- after Ren destroyed the Temple?" her mother asks.

Rey knows she's imagining the weight of her Grandpa's hand on her shoulder, but it's always nice to pretend, and she knows she _isn't_ imagining his voice.

 _It's okay._

"Grandpa and Grandma raised me on a planet called Jakku," Rey begins, and the air falls still.

* * *

It's too much emotion for one night. There's a lot of crying, and a lot of shouting, and a lot of shouting while crying. Her mother is furious with her father for leaving her on Jakku, and her father seems willing to bow his head and take the lashing- it doesn't matter that his wife is shouting at him, because his wife is _alive_ , and he thought she'd never be able to do _anything_ again. Rey defends him, a little bit- he didn't _know_ that they had died- but even she hurts, still, though she rarely ever shows it. She's forgiven her father, but that doesn't change what happened.

Rey's mother hugs her before she leaves. Rey goes stiff for a fraction of a second, she _does_ hug back, but it's enough for her mother to look agonized. She kisses Rey's forehead.

Rey flees to the rooftops, but from there she can see the _Jade Sabre-_ \- she goes to the _Falcon_ , instead, and buries herself in its machinery, and pretends she's far away on some distant planet, all hues of blue and green, and that there's nothing wrong in the galaxy.

Han more or less gives her the ship after the first couple times they move bases. Surprisingly enough, he doesn't look like he's in pain when he does; he says that if she ever needs a ship to take the _Falcon_ , because the old ship will get her anywhere in the galaxy, and not to let it get blown up. "She's home to me, but so's Leia," he tells her. "And I can't leave, not again."

"Suppose we survive this, Mr. Dollie," she muses aloud. The control panels in the cockpit are starting to short out, and that can be disastrous if if happens in flight. Rey is half-underneath the console, only her legs sticking out, her feet propped up in the copilot's chair while she works. The doll, ragged and threadbare, has a new orange uniform, made in part out of scraps of the old one, which fell apart a few months back, and sits proudly on top of the navscreen. "The war. It's our ship now, so we can go wherever we want to. We could go _anywhere_. Maybe- Naboo? That's where Grandma lived. They have a memorial garden dedicated to her. And Endor, because that's where Grandpa was buried. That, and Ewoks sound precious."

" _Careful, they have a bite,"_ Grandpa says. _"They took down AT-ATs."_

"Wonderful!" Rey exclaims, and he laughs. They fall into a companionable silence- or maybe for _him_ it's companionable, but Rey's thoughts are still whirling, and she's fallen out of the zone her mind slips into when she's fixing things. "Grandpa?"

" _Yes?"_

"Did you know- Mama was alive?" He doesn't answer for a long stretch of time. Rey hastens to elaborate. "I know you wouldn't have kept it from me, not- deliberately. You told me she was dead."

" _All beings become one with the Force, Rey,"_ he cuts in gently. _"Jedi, anybody who can tap into the power of the Force, they have an easier time manifesting in this world after death. They have an easier time communicating with one another. Your grandmother, she isn't supposed to be here, but- you know my thoughts about rules and masters. Your_ _ **mother**_ _, Rey, she... I knew her, when I was Vader. I went looking for her, to find her and tell her what had happened to you, to teach her how to manifest like I can, but I couldn't find her. She would have had no way of knowing what happened to you, so I assumed she was avoiding me. And wherever she was being kept, she was forced to wear an inhibitor. No one had any way of knowing she was still alive."_

Rey blinks up at the circuitry, vision blurring.

" _If I had known she was alive, I would have told you, Rey. I swear it."_

"I believe you," she says, and that's really too much emotion in too short a time frame. She feels raw and shaky. "Could you tell me a story?"

" _Of course,"_ he says, voice warm, and she resumes the rewiring of a panel as he begins to speak. _"I haven't told you about the time Padme and I each skipped out on our duties to spend a whole day together on Coruscant- have I?"_

"No," Rey tells him. He never seems to run out of stories to tell, rarely repeats them, even after fifteen years.

" _Okay, well- it wasn't the smartest decision, and Obi-Wan was decidedly upset with me when I came back, but we had the best time. See, we were just going around sightseeing for a while, lost track of time, realized we were hungry, so we stopped at the closest place to eat, but that's_ _ **also**_ _not the smartest decision on Coruscant. We walk into this ridiculously upscale place, and neither of us are dressed up because we're trying to avoid attention, and it isn't that we didn't know how to act in a place like that, but I hate rules and we were trying to avoid all those formalities. Then the_ _maître d'_ _catches sight of us and gives us this look, who are_ _ **these**_ _common folk, so of course we straighten up and ask them if there are any tables free..."_

It's whimsical and anecdotal and doesn't have any kind of deep meaning to it, not like a lot of his stories do. Grandma joins part of the way in, adding her own commentary. It's hilariously funny, because Grandpa and Grandma had set out to make all the pretentious people there as uncomfortable as possible -– Grandpa particularly, Rey notices between fits of laughter. He could never stand the idea of overindulgence, having come from a place that had nothing, from a people who had nothing. Rey understands that, a little bit. Maybe she can talk Poe and Finn into doing something similar with her.

" _We order this ridiculously expensive soup, some fancy name I can't remember, and- Padme, it was this, this-"_

 _"-awful, puce-colored thing,"_ Grandma laughs, _"popular on maybe one or two planets in an isolated system, considered a delicacy there. And it tastes like absolutely_ _ **nothing**_ _to Humans. So we spent-"_

 _"-the_ _ **whole**_ _time making these sarcastic comments to each other, 'oh, yes, the watery texture of this is perfect-'"_

" _'-and the tepidity of the dish really brings out its flavor, doesn't it-'"_

"- _-Force, it was wonderful!_ "

" _I thought you were going to get us kicked out, Ani."_

 _"I thought_ _ **you**_ _were going to get us kicked out, love."_

Rey has long since stopped attempting to repair the console and has curled herself up in one of the chairs. Her cheeks hurt from laughing so much. "But- wouldn't they _recognize_ you? Both of you were famous!"

Grandpa just kind of shrugs. _"Hey, they see what they expect and want to see. It was only the tabloids who ever got anything right about us, and no one listened to them."_

" _Besides,"_ Grandma adds, amused, lips twitching. _"The Senator of Naboo would_ _ **never**_ _act in such a manner."_

" _Definitely not,"_ Grandpa agrees, just barely managing to keep a straight face. _"And why would General Skywalker be spending time with the Senator?"_

"The tabloids?" Rey asks them. She's seen the brightly patterned holomags scattered around the base, blaring ridiculous headlines like EVIDENCE GENERAL HUX ACTUALLY GENERAL GREVIOUS –- #3 _WILL_ SHOCK YOU _._

" _We weren't exactly- subtle,"_ Grandma says tactfully, and Grandpa snorts. _"But it was like we said. No one expected us to be together, so they didn't notice. It was, to most people, a ludicrous idea, which is exactly why the tabloids got it right. Your grandfather nearly had a heart attack the first time he saw one."_

" _I did not-"_

" _You did, Ani."_

Rey smiles again. She still feels raw, like a sandstorm has scoured away much of the walls she's built up around her heart to protect it, but- she feels better. Grandma and Grandpa always tell the best stories.

However:

"It's getting late," she says, looking at the ship's chrono, and she feels the weight of the long day settling heavy on her shoulders. "Poe is leaving early in the morning, and Finn and I want to be there to see him off."

 _"Sleeping at the base or in the Falcon?"_ Grandpa asks her.

Sleeping on the _Falcon_ means she won't risk running into anyone on the way back to her quarters, but it's also the first place people will look for her if they want to find her. Sleeping in her quarters- well, it's a terribly large room, at least to her, and the bed is too soft, and the air is too quiet-

"In the base," she says. "Thank you for staying with me."

 _Thank you for staying when no one else did._

" _We aren't leaving,"_ he replies, and Grandma takes his hand and smiles at Rey, and she thinks that it's okay being the child of legends if it means she has her grandparents in her life.

Poe and Finn aren't sleeping when she knocks on the door to their quarters; Poe is obsessively fine-tuning some of BB-8's circuitry to make sure there isn't a repeat of his last mission (the little ball droid, as it turns out, doesn't do well on cold planets, and Poe had needed to lug him through a blizzard to the X-Wing when he abruptly powered down), and Finn is reading, absorbing anything and everything that isn't First Order propaganda.

They don't ask questions, though she knows they have a general idea of what's upset her. Finn puts down his book, and Poe finishes reconnecting some wires and closes the panel on the top of BB-8's head and sends the droid back to his charge port, and they all pile into the lower of the two bunks in the room, Rey squished between them.

The bed is kind of cramped, and Finn is like a small furnace, and she'll find out in a few hours that Poe snores, but they hold her and Finn lets her cry into his shirt and Poe hums something quiet and soothing and they all fall asleep in a tangle of limbs and she isn't quite as sad when she's with them.

The lonely years on Jakku are almost worth it if they mean she gets to have these two in her life.

* * *

"Rey. Rey, I need to get up."

Rey blinks a couple of times, still very sleepy and not entirely sure of where she is. Not Jakku, it's too soft, and the warmth around her isn't the dry heat of desert suns- but not her quarters in the base, because she isn't alone, and not the bunk in the _Falcon_ \- she blinks again, and she's tucked in between Poe and Finn, and BB-8 may or may not be taking holopics from over by his charge port. Her vision is still blurred from sleep.

Finn's arm is like a durasteel beam over her waist, and his chest is pressed against her back, his face up by her hair- half of Poe's torso, meanwhile, is underneath her, and she realizes she has her fingers wrapped around his wrist. He's looking down at her, smiling in amusement, not fully awake yet but decidedly more awake than she is- prods at her foot with his.

"Nn," she replies eloquently, and she doesn't want to get out of the cocoon of blankets or the safe feeling that comes from their arms around her, but she does anyway, because Poe has to leave and she can't keep him from that, even if she wants to. She does her best to extricate herself without waking Finn or elbowing Poe- succeeds in the first but not the second, and her body is still all bones and sharp angles. "Sorry."

"No worries," Poe whispers, sounding a bit winded, and he smiles at her and rolls out of the bunk. "Here, more room so you can go back to sleep."

On one hand, _sleep_ , but- "S'pposed t'go with you. T'the shipyards."

"Not for another three hours, love. There's a mission briefing before we fly out. I'll set an alarm so the two of you can be there, okay?"

That makes sense, and she's too tired for more words- still feels drained from yesterday, and it's too _early_ to be doing anything. She likes sleep. Poe kisses her forehead, and she crawls back under the covers with Finn and huddles up against his side and drifts off to sleep to the noises of Poe getting ready and BB-8's soft chirps and beeps.

(he calls her "love" and she tries to commit to memory the exact feeling of her heart seeming to warm inside of her)

* * *

 **One more chapter. As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed.**


	3. Chapter 3

"You're late, Dameron," General Organa says, and she sounds tired, but there's fondness in her eyes. Poe has always thought of her as a mother figure, though he's never said anything about it- doesn't dare say anything about it now, not after what happened to her son. He thinks she knows, though.

"Had trouble getting out of bed this morning," he replies easily, taking his seat next to Jess Pava. It _is_ the truth, and he had waited close to half an hour after his alarm went off to wake Rey, because she looked so _peaceful_ and damn if he doesn't want her to always be peaceful like that, unworried, unafraid.

His squadron sits with him for the mission brief. General Organa and her husband are there, because they always are during the mission briefs- Skywalker isn't there, and Poe is grateful for that, because Jedi Master or no, General Organa's sister or no, he isn't entirely sure that he could keep himself from hitting the man.

Rey's explained it to him and Finn both- it's a complicated emotional mess, and she needs to be the one to work things out with her father, and _Poe, don't get upset because of me-_ \- and sure, the guy had assumed she'd be safe, but he's seen the scars on Rey's body, he knows how she hoards food in her quarters because _I need to ration this, Poe, what if it runs out_ , he knows that Finn was the first person to properly hug her in fifteen years. And knowing all that, he can't _not_ be pissed off.

But Skywalker isn't here, so his issues with the man are irrelevant, and he focuses his attention on the briefing.

* * *

They wake up again, a little while later and a little bit before the alarm Poe has set for them goes off. She's still wearing the same clothes she wore all day yesterday, and her quarters are two blocks away and they don't have _that_ much time, but Finn just tosses her one of his shirts and Poe's leather jacket and a brush for her hair.

Rey gets the tangles out while Finn hunts down his own clothes, nimbly does her hair up in a single bun instead of three. Finn's shirt is too big on her, Poe's jacket even bigger, but she wraps herself in the warm fabrics and breathes in the smell of grease and motor oil and feels better than she had the night before. She feels... drained, now, but she'll take it to feeling like an open wound someone rubbed sand in.

They hurry out from their quarters and off to the shipyards in the wee hours of the morning, the sky only just starting to turn gray with the coming dawn, mist still clinging to the trees and the ground, and Poe is there in his orange pilot's jumpsuit, standing with the rest of his squadron. Leia is there, as always, to shake their hands and see them off.

Poe lights up when he sees them, ignores whistles behind him as he jogs across the tarmac (though BB-8's whistle from the back of his X-Wing is more excited than teasing), wraps them both in a hug.

"Jacket suits you," he says with a wry grin.

Rey smiles back as best she can, quashing the worry inside of her that says this is just another person who won't come back. His hugs are like a blanket, warm and soft and _love-care-safe_ , and she focuses on that instead. "Don't make us lead a rescue mission for you, Dameron."

"Who, me? I'd never need a rescue mission."

"I beg to differ," Finn says, and they all laugh. "Good luck, man. Fly safe."

"Will do. It's only reconnaissance, scouting out potential areas for future bases. I'll be back before you know it!"

They're interrupted by Pava - "Whenever you lovebirds are finished...!" - and they reply, almost at exactly the same time, "Not lovebirds!" and that just sets them off laughing again. But Poe needs to leave, and the half-dozen X-Wings take flight in a perfect V formation, and Finn and Rey watch until the Xs fade to dots fade to foggy sky.

"Breakfast?" Finn asks.

Rey nods. But first-

"Leia?"

Leia turns, and her smile is kind, her smile is _always_ kind, and Rey isn't sure how she keeps that kindness after everything. She's heard the stories. "Luke's quarters are down the hall from mine, and Mara has her own next to his, if you want to talk to them."

If, _if_ , and that's part of the problem, isn't it?

"Thank you."

Breakfast comes first, if only because it's too early for any heavy conversation, and she still feels tired. Finn takes her hand, and their fingers lace together, and it's early enough that no one is in line at the mess hall and they can take their time picking what they want to eat.

They pile a plate high with pancakes and some sweet syrupy something that Rey thinks is made from fruit, and a cup of actual fruit, and two chilled water bulbs, and settle down at a table with the plate between them and tuck in. It's baffling how much food is just _there_ , available for anyone to eat regardless of how much work they've done or how well they've done it. It's baffling how much food gets thrown away at each meal- it almost makes Rey sick, when she thinks of Jakku and the jut of her bones and the hunger gnawing away at her insides, so she saves what she doesn't eat and eats what she can't save.

Between the two of them, though, they clear the whole plate, and she feels better after having eaten, after talking with Finn. From the mess hall they go their separate ways, Finn to assist in medical and Rey to-

-well, to do _something_.

She knows she isn't the kind of person to run from her problems, despite family history, but she has to talk herself into going further into the base and seeking out the two solar flares in the Force that are Mara Jade and Luke Skywalker. Before she succeeds in that, she fixes some transport engines, helps a radar technician with some trouble, eats lunch with Finn, works on the _Falcon-_

Right, okay, this isn't helping anything.

Rey casts her mind out, brushing over the base, drifting and hovering about until she finds Mara, mixed in a swirl of lights and movement- the _Falcon's_ chrono says that she's worked up until dinnertime, and most of the base is slowly working their way through the mess hall. She isn't hungry, but she stands all the same, brushes her hair from her face, scrubs most of the grease from her hands, changes into a set of clothes that aren't filthy from repairs.

It's weird, having different clothes to wear every day.

She ducks back into her quarters, very briefly, gathers up some schematics and her datapad and Poe's jacket -– it's not precisely cold at night, on this planet, but it can get cool and windy. Hurries out, forces herself to put one foot after the other after the other until she slips into the chaos of the mess hall in the evening, bright noise and talking and laughter.

Mara has somehow managed to get a table to herself, a tiny square just big enough for her and a few other people tucked into the corner. Either no one's noticed her or no one has the courage to go sit with her, but whatever reason there is doesn't matter to Rey. The table is otherwise empty, which means she has room to sit down, and her mother looks over with a crooked kind of smile.

"Hello, Rey," she says softly.

"Hi," Rey says. Fidgets. "I had, um. Ideas. Was wondering if you could take a look?"

The crooked smile blossoms into something brighter, younger, and Mara spears a piece of fruit on her fork. "Give me a moment to finish eating, and we'll find somewhere that's quiet."

"Okay. Thank you."

"It's not a problem." A pause. "Have you eaten?"

"Wasn't hungry."

It's the truth, at least, because she still isn't used to three full meals a day, and her stomach still protests when she eats something too rich or too sweet or too spiced. She doesn't say all that- the conversation-turned-emotional-mess from the night before had only just covered how she grew up on Jakku and Luke had exiled himself and what had happened with Starkiller, and she'd avoided mentioning all of the hungry and cold nights, the injuries- she doesn't want to bring it up, not yet, and she doesn't want to ruin this moment, to take away the smile from Mara's face.

Mara eyes her with a scrutinizing gaze, then pushes over a cup of vegetables and half the bread on her plate. "You're skinnier than your father was when I met him, and that's saying something."

 _Grandpa said he was short_ , she thinks, but doesn't say- _I knew her, when I was Vader_ , and she knows that Leia doesn't like any mention of Grandpa and thinks Mara might not either.

"Thank you," she says again, and she isn't sure what else to add.

They both finish quickly, Rey out of habit and Mara due to the fact that she was almost finished when Rey sat down, and then they duck out into the hall and out the base and back towards the shipyards yet again.

Shipyards are a good place for thinking, Rey decides.

She trails along behind and a little bit to the left, looking at the way Mara's hair catches the sunset, turning into a halo of flames about her. She wants to think that it was like that on Yavin, at the Temple- but now, with so much time between her and the past, she's never sure which of her thoughts are memories and which are dreams, crafted in order to comfort her. She isn't sure how to ask.

"They've checked the _Jade Sabre_ for bugs and trackers," Mara explains, punching in a keycode and walking up the ramp that lowers down. "Finally going to let me work on fixing her. You're- welcome to help, if you want."

Even after the First Order got its hands on the ship, it's still an elegant design, sleek and narrow and probably very fast, with the right pilot at the helm. It's better than any ship she's ever seen before, if she's being honest, if only because it's _unlike_ any ship she's ever seen before, and she's seen a lot of ships.

"What model is it?"

"Custom-built," Mara replies, and Rey can hear the smile in her voice. "Your father built it as a wedding present, after I crashed the old one to get us into a complex we needed to infiltrate."

That sounds like an interesting story. That sounds like a _really_ interesting story.

"I can tell you more about it later- there's a table in the galley, and I'm curious to see what you've got there."

Right. Stuff.

If there's one thing Rey is good at, it's mechanics. If there's one thing Rey is _bad_ at, it's conversing with people, but when she's conversing about mechanics, the two kind of cancel out, sort of.

So they sit down at the table, and Rey takes out her datapad and her notes and her scraps of ideas and spreads them all out, pushing the papers around until they fall into a vaguely coherent order, tapping the datapad's screen until the hologram she wants comes up -– she's not as good with the 3D designs as a lot of other people are on base, but she's working on it, and it makes it easier to see exactly how parts will fit together.

"Grandpa says that there's a planet with crystals not far from the base," she says when she's finished. Mara is looking over the designs curiously. "A few systems over, it might take me a couple of days to get there and back, if I'm allowed to go. Jedi are supposed to build their own sabers, aren't they?"

"This is double-bladed," she says, tapping a finger on a rough outline of the saber, both blades sketched out to show their size in comparison to the hilt. "If you're only using one crystal, they'd be thinner, smaller."

"I designed an amplifier, hold on, it'-s- _here_ , if I wire that into the emitter matrix, it should extend the reach of the blade..."

Rey is very good at talking about mechanics.

They pour over designs, and Mara makes suggestions or points out a mistake or asks for clarification on a footnote, and when she asks if she can call Luke in Rey says yes and refuses to think about the backlash- it goes well, surprisingly, rather quiet, but quiet is a welcome change from the night before. Luke and Mara must have spoken at some point during the day while Rey was- well, _avoiding_ them, because there isn't even a lingering tension in the Force around them.

The construction of sabers is supposed to be something unique to each Jedi, the designs not shared with another soul- that was what Grandpa said about the old Jedi Order, anyway. Rey doesn't think she cares much for them, and she certainly doesn't consider herself a member, so she does what she wants.

She crawls into bed next to Finn and folds up into a little ball under the covers, and their fingers lace together.

"Talk with them?" he asks.

"Yes," she says. "Went better."

"Good." He squeezes her hand. "Heard from Pava who heard it from Snap who heard it from a mechanic that there's gonna be ice cream in the mess hall tomorrow."

"What's ice cream?"

"Dunno, but she was pretty excited about it. Figured you and I could go check it out."

"Love to. After sleep, though."

"After sleep," he agrees. "'Night, Rey."

"Goodnight, Finn."

* * *

Ice cream, as it turns out, is magical.

* * *

She starts work on the lightsaber. She tinkers with the _Falcon_ , occasionally joined by someone- anyone, really, she's had visits from Han, Leia, Chewbacca, Mara, Luke, Finn, Jess, BB-8- and speaking of BB-8, he seems to have spread his love of her to the other droids on base, because they start to show up, too. She tries new foods with Finn. She learns how to talk to her parents again- doesn't call them _Mama_ and _Papa_ , doesn't know if she ever will, but they're all trying, and that's the best that they can do. She sits in on meetings with the Resistance leaders and offers suggestions and they listen. She talks with Grandpa and Grandma.

It's not easy, but she's used to not easy, _nothing_ for her has been easy, and she's come to expect a challenge at every turn.

It's in another meeting, more informal than the others but no less important, and a technician hurries in saying that the base scanners are picking up a squadron of six ships coming out of hyperspace, the same number of ships that left a few standard weeks back, and she can already feel a weight lifting off her shoulders.

"I believe we'll need to cut this meeting short," Leia says, getting to her feet. "Our pilots deserve a warm welcome."

Rey slips away from her seat near Luke and Mara, grabs Finn by the hand, and darts off toward the shipyards.

None of this is easy. The waiting isn't easy. The fighting isn't easy. The First Order took a massive blow with the destruction of Starkiller, but they have the resources of loyalists to the Empire behind them and the Republic is no longer standing in their way.

She thinks it's worth it, though.


End file.
